Friday, September 13, 2013

The Student Who Keeps Me after Class

            I woke up at 2:00 AM feeling really good this morning.  I went through the newspaper and found fascinating items.  DIY failed projects www.pinterestfail.com...An exhibit I'd like to see at the Oakland Museum, "Stories from Our Changing Bay"…The award-winning (Tony?)   Vanya & Sonia & Masha and Spike coming to Berkeley Rep.  Patrica Kaas singing Piaf…The Michael Fox Show incorporating his problem with Parkinsons…The Last Tango in Halifax…delusions of grandeur movie.com  …Glennis Paltrow’s blog mocked by Vanity Fair and another blog, Celebitchy.  Mention of Crash 1996  in the realm of sex addiction films.  (Why didn't they mention 9 1/2 Weeks?)   Can Heironymous Merkein… The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.  Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black…The Atheist’s film festival showing something about Texas school book selectors trying to de-select the theory of evolution…  Hollywood documentary. Brownlow  In Friendship Stories by Word for World   Then at 4:30 I got   Minh-hoa Ta’s piece ready to send and sent it to her with a note of thanks and to Sally Winn with some additional observations.  Wrote to Belinda at NIAD about David’s art, to Suzy and Mary Scaler about taking him out September 28 and Mary about 42:  The Jackie Robinson Story.   Then I remembered to read the make-up essays Jose and Jason did yesterday and responded to them just before leaving the house.  Classes went well.  I explained everything very well and got them to do useful pair activities.    However, ESL 142 003 was a little bit rushed—partly because I gave a chance to two students who hadn’t taken the  short test.  I usually don’t take class time for that. 
            Then, of course, one of my students tried to keep me after class, as he almost always does, so I should admire him and respect him and be awed by his industriousness and love every moment of answering his questions, right?  So why do I keep thinking of the teacher in Madrid at Mangold Institute who said, when one student showed up on a day when all other students were making a "bridge" between one holiday and another by not coming to class, "I'd like to bash his head in"?  I do not want to bash this student's head in.  Yet, I know that if someone paid me to tutor--even if they paid me a lot--I'd rather be able to leave at the end of the morning and go home.  In this case, I was in a hurry to get home to get ready for Fremont, where I'm supposed to be later this afternoon.  But I could have stayed a little bit longer.  Is it the assumption, the presumption, the feeling of entitlement I am recoiling at?  I really don't know.  I'm a little bit ashamed of myself even though I don't want to bash his head in.  I really don't. 

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